Photos by Anne Hamersky, courtesy of bethcuster.com
Beth Custer
The San Francisco musician and label owner talks about grants, writing film scores, and preaching Respect As a Religion
By Elizabeth Rhodes
Published: August 16th, 2005 | 11:58am
It’s hard to fathom when Beth Custer finds time to sleep. The San Francisco-based composer, band leader, clarinetist, and proprietor of BC Records spends up to six days a week at her meat locker-turned-studio working on projects ranging from scoring a 1920s Soviet silent film to composing political funk rants for her latest band, the Beth Custer Ensemble. A handful of the Bay Area’s best musicians joined Custer to form BCE, including longtime collaborator Jan Jackson on drums. The group’s debut full-length, Respect As A Religion, was released in April 2005. Custer also wrote an American folk and blues score for My Grandmother, a satiric Soviet silent film made in 1929 that will be re-released on DVD this fall.
You compose for film, dance troupes, funk bands, experimental instruments, and orchestra. When did you start writing music?
It’s just the last 10 years that I’ve really pursued claiming myself as a composer and getting commissions. I got lucky in the early ’90s when my great aunt died and left me $10,000, so I was able to put out my first CDs and live off it for a little while.
Where do you compose?
I have a little studio [that’s] an old meat locker. It’s [part of] a big plot of land the Navy abandoned that has the highest concentration of artists in the United States — at least that’s what one person told me. It’s also a toxic waste dump, so who knows what kind of cancers I’m attracting. It’s a really desolate place. Sometimes I think I’m living too much inside my head — that’s what my boyfriend says. When you’re a composer, it’s like you’re extracting stuff out of your brain all the time.
How would you describe your style?
It’s contemporary classical-influenced American blues and jazz. [I’m] definitely influenced by all different styles of music. It shows in my record collection – there’s everything from Macedonian brass bands to Brahms concertos.
You play clarinet, keyboard, and sing with the Beth Custer Ensemble. What was the first instrument you learned to play?
I started piano when I was about three. When I was 9, [the school] gave us this simple musical test and assigned me the clarinet, so I joined the third-grade band. The clarinet is like second nature now. I play B-flat, alto, and bass. Each one has a really different quality, [but] they all have that wood that is so dark and can be so mournful but also so happy.
Were your parents musicians?
[My father] was actually a very good pianist, but his dad forced him to go to law school. He didn’t have a choice and so he was really encouraging with my music. My mom was really into Detroit radio and so my dad would play Rachmaninov on the piano and then my mom would turn on the soul station.
Your bachelor and master’s degrees were in classical clarinet performance. How did you start doing jazz- and funk-inspired music à la BCE?
I started playing jazz in college. I got turned onto Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis, who I’ve always really been influenced by. I [also] focused a lot on contemporary classical music like Bartók, Ronald Caravan, and Stockhausen.
And then in 2002 you were working as a composer in San Francisco when you won the prestigious Meet the Composer Residency Grant.
Yeah, and that just ended! That was living high on the hog! I can’t say enough about Meet the Composer. They fund composers for getting pieces out there. I was in residence at The Lab, which is this really small performance space in the Mission, 10 blocks from my house. It ended in June, [so] this is my first month without a paycheck.
Let’s talk about Respect as a Religion. I love the title. Where did you get the idea for it?
Two years ago I was walking in Barcelona and there was this really big poster out of nowhere that just said, “Respect as a Religion.” It kept sticking in my mind, you know, what a great phrase. If we only had respect as a religion instead of these ridiculous wars over oil and religion we’re having now. So I went back at six in the morning right before I was ready to leave Barcelona and it was all covered up with other posters. I ripped them all down and took a bunch of snapshots — hoping I wouldn’t get arrested.
Much of the album is protest music.
I’ve just been so angry about stuff happening with this administration and with society in general. I think it’s just a way of me venting my frustration. It sure is not the ‘60s and ‘70s anymore, [when] I can remember hearing protest songs on mainstream radio. We are not living in those times anymore, but thank goodness we have the Internet. I think it’s really a great tool for people like myself who just need to get their songs out there. You can just type in “independent radio” and get a whole list of stations. That’s what really thrills me — occasionally I get a random e-mail from someone who’ll just say, “You know, I play your record all the time and I love your song. I dance to it.”
When did you start your record label, BC Records?
I believe it was 1994. To me it’s just a waste of time to send [a recording] to these big companies. It ends up in a pile somewhere and people think it’s too eclectic. I didn’t even really think about it — it was more an act of self-determination to put it out myself. This year I have seven CDs on my label. I’m thinking about trying to produce other people and making it a real business.
You also write film scores.
I love to get together with a filmmaker and look at their film and figure out what they think it needs. Usually these people aren’t musicians and they don’t speak the language of music, so you have to interpret what they’re saying. I’m considering going back to school — film school. I have this fantasy of breaking into the film world ’cause I really love composing for film.
What do you like about being a musician?
I like being a musician because it’s a privileged life, in a way. A lot of people I know still don’t know what they want to do in life, but to me I’ve never had any question. There’s been occasionally when I get tired [after] some awful gig — the nights when you come home and go, “Oh, maybe I should become an acupuncturist or a librarian.” But I like being my own boss. It’s really a great life.
For more information, check out bethcuster.com
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